keepers of myth

Myths across the world use an assortment of images, symbols and visual references to build lasting metaphors. Their power lies not only in the thought, the philosophy or the event that resides in them but also in the tools deployed to get the point across. Like the breadcrumbs used by Hansel in the well known German fairy tale or like the ball of string that Theseus used to find the minotaur, myths are a map of the real and the imaginary worlds that our ancestors built.

Myth speaks in a common tongue to a diverse audience. It reflects an innocent and yet complex engagement with the world around us and the world within us. It is metaphoric in form and structure; its meaning is layered in spirals that could take us an entire lifetime to climb but, it is so direct in its intent that a child can grasp at the colour and iconography that it dresses itself up in.

Poet and a great believer in the Vedas, W B Yeats once said: “I cannot now think symbols less than the greatest of all powers whether they are used consciously by the masters of magic, or half unconsciously by their successors, the poet, the musician and the artist”(W B Yeats in an essay called Magic in Essays and Introduction, Macmillan.) Yeats believed that the artist, the writer and the musician were inheritors of the legacy of magic and hence understood the potency of the symbols used in magic. His use of the word magic is similar to that of Frazer who describes the different kinds of magic that led to the development of religion. And it is this language of symbols and icons that myths have inherited or as some would believe, even created.

The language of myth is independent of religion and hence it appeals across faiths. It aims to challenge the human mind and is meant to evoke awe and shock and provoke further explorations of thought and philosophy. At the same time, it is deliberately wrapped in religious iconography and explicit imagery so that the stories and their messages leave a lasting imprint on the human mind.

As we leave behind a year riddled in bullets, we need to let this language speak to us. We need to understand the many tongues that roll in many different ways to speak the same truths and denounce the same lies. From the eye of Hathor to the third eye of Shiv, from the rage of Sekhmet to the rampage of Kali and from the ark of Noah to the boat of Manu -- we need to understand the signs and symbols that speak to us through the ages.

Image: A sculpture outside the monastery at Bylakuppe, a Tibetan settlement in Karnataka India
Picture by Rajrishi Singhal

Fortune hunters

The word adventure owes its existence to two words -- the old French word auenture which meant fortune or chance and the Latin word adventura which meant arrival. The two coalesced into one to enter the Middle English vocabulary as adventure which meant a perilous undertaking that would lead one to fortune. From one came many, as it happens with all creation and over time words such as, misadventure, adventurer made it to the lexicon. Over the years, the meaning of the word too changed – adventure mellowed down to denote the spirit that led men to climb mountains and cross the seas.

The spirit of adventure led Vasco da Gama to steer his motley crew to the unknown shores of a country that was still to meld its fragmented wadas and tehsils into a contiguous boundary. He was looking to spread the message of his religion and, in the process, take back the riches of the East that he had heard so much about. This is the spirit that infused mountaineers and explorers who felt that they owed it to humanity to go where no one had gone before.

Adventure mellowed some more and found itself curled up in books about swashbuckling heroes and villains and about children courting danger as they confronted thieves and evil. It aligned itself with fun and bravery and was almost always seen fighting on the side of good in its war against evil.

Today adventure seems to have reinvented itself yet again and in so doing reverted to a chilling shadow of its former self. As Bombay cowered under the nameless, senseless terror unleashed by a bunch of 10 terrorists, adventure seemed to wear the face of a young man who has no time for fear nor the inclination for contemplation and remorse. He is a soldier of fortune. A soldier who takes to battle not to defend his home or life but for the thrill of risk, for a charismatic leader, to fight against a perceived threat to his existence or that of his religion and for the sake of bounty.

Perhaps in the evolution of the word, lies a clue about the evolution of the human mind.

First men

For many of us, it seems almost impossible to believe that the world we live in was shaped out of a single mass of matter – not always carved up, as it is today, into compartments of nationality, religion, colour and language.

How do I know that? Well as far as scientific evidence goes, I go with that unearthed by the genographic project of National Geographic which has traced the origin of all humanity to Africa. But for those who do not always depend upon the physical sciences to validate their beliefs, even a cursory sip of the sloshing brew of world mythology would have pointed to the same.

The similarities, the shared motifs and imagery and the common fascination with events beyond our ken point to a people united in flesh and spirit. This story from African mythology, mentioned by Joseph Campbell in his book, Historical Atlas of World Mythology: The way of the animal powers is a lovely example.

Called Forbidden Fruit-A Bassari Legend (page 14 of the book), it is about a being called Unumbotte who created the first human and called him Man. He then created antelope and called him Antelope and then made a snake and called him, well what else, Snake. At the time that the three creatures came into existence, the world had no trees except for one: the palm tree. Nor had the earth been pounded smooth. It was rough and scrabbly, much like the insides of a dead volcano (perhaps).

The three, Man, Antelope and Snake, lived off the land and forged a strong bond. One day as they sat quietly staring into the distance, Unumbotte came to them. He said, “The earth has not yet been pounded. You must do that.” He then handed out a variety of seeds and asked them to go plant them.

Some time later Unumbotte came back to earth only to find that the ground had not been beaten smooth but, the seeds had been sown. And one of the seeds had even sprouted a tree that rose tall and high and bore a red fruit. Unumbotte said nothing.

From that day on however, every seven days, Unumbotte would return to earth and pluck one of the fruits off the tree and take it back with him. One day, Snake said to the tohers, “We too are hungry. Why don’t we pluck one of the fruits and eat it?” Man and wife (we don’t know how wife came to be, the story does not go into the details) agreed but Antelope said, how can we eat it when we don’t know anything about it. So he ate the wild grass instead.

When Unumbotte came for his weekly fruit gathering ritual, he asked his flock, “Who asked you to eat the fruit?” When they said that it was Snake, he then asked, “Do you feel hungry?” When they said yes, he said that from then on man would eat fruit, antelope grass but snake was given poison and asked to use it at his discretion.

Campbell says that the story was orally collected, the tribe that told the story had not had any contact with civilisation or Christian missionaries and they said that this story had been handed down to them by their elders.

Of mountains and men

There was a time, not recorded in historical annals or journals or gazettes, when the mountains had wings. They could fly anywhere they wished but when they did, they crashed continents, threw civilisations into tumultuous frenzy and created an environment of uncertainty and fear.

Naturally the people panicked. They rushed to Indra, god of all gods, for help. Indra mulled over their plight and although the solution occurred to him a flash, he mulled it over some more. For what he was about to do would change the mountains’ lives forever.

Indra sent down his vajra, the thunderbolt to clip the wings of the mountains. Their wings cut, the mountains could move no more and that is how in Sanskrit, they got their name achala (or those that can not walk). The wings floated up and Indra made them the clouds. Even today, there are some days, in some places, when the wings come down to meet their old masters.

Very similar to this myth is a myth cum folk tale from Orissa which I think I have put down on this blog earlier titled Elephants and wings.

The story goes that there was a time that elephants had wings. They flew the skies with free abandon and often, oblivious to the bulk they carried, perched themselves on trees, huts and mountain tops. While the mountains bore their weight with ease, trees and houses were not as fortunate. They came crashing down with a frequency that angered the men and the gods. And finally there came a day when man decided that enough was enough and appealed to the gods. The gods lent a sympathetic ear and a plan was hatched.

Now it is public knowledge that elephants like their food and drink. So the people got together and invited all the elephants to a feast that lasted several days and nights until all the elephants lay down in a drunken stupor. Man who had been waiting for this moment went around chopping off their wings. Naturally when sleep wore off, the elephants were outraged and went to the gods to seek revenge against man. But it was too late and they realised that they had been tricked by both man and god.

The myths, as they are wont to, lead us into uncharted territory and raise a load of questions:
Are these recordings of ancient events that survived in the collective memory of the people of the region?
Could it be that the mountains with wings are about earthquakes that changed the shape of the world as people knew it?
Were there creatures that were elephantine in their appearance and could fly?

We don't know but the myths will always force us to wonder and ask; what if...?

life and death

Ths is a lovely myth that i read in Myths and Legends of the World by Kenneth McLeish.
In Africa, a long time ago, Kalumba the creator god built a long single road that connected heaven and earth. Dog and Goat were positioned as guards on the road and had been trained by Kalumba Himself who had warned them about two visitors: life and death. They were to let life into earth but death had to be turned back. Of the two guards, Dog had been granted intelligence while Goat was given strength as its special characteristic.
One day, Dog was bored as the road did not have too many travellers and there was not much checking to be done and he decided to go for a short walk. This was just the opportunity that Death had been waiting for. Disguised as a bundle of dirty clothes, he sat upon the shoulders of his servants who walked him safely past Goat. A few minutes later, Life came by and Goat who took his job very seriously, pounced on her. Dog, who had chosen that very moment to come back from his stroll, ran to avoid a deadly disaster but was too late.
No amount of crying and begging by the guards worked on Kalumba who shut the road down with immediate effect and barred dog and goat from the gates of heaven. Ever since, we on earth have had to live with death while life goes on in heaven.

time and tortoise

Myths do a great job of marrying the verbal and visual in our imagination.

I found this one in a dictionary of myth describing Kasyapa from Indian mythology. (ref: Myths and Legends of the world, Kenneth Mcleish)Kasyapa was husband to the 13 daughters of Daksha (also believed to be the 13 months of the lunar calendar) and father to every living creature according to Mcleish's classification.

In some myths, Kasyapa is husband of Diti, father of the Daityas that include Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu and the 49 Maruts.

In Sanskrit, Kasyapa also means tortoise and is sometimes depicted as time creeping across the sky.

It must have been quite a fascinating journey for the mythmakers to convert concept to word and word to image or was it the other way around?

Art: Mekhala Singhal

krishna's inheritors

The papers yesterday had an interesting quote from a murder accused. Sentenced to life in prison, the accused man is said to have quipped that he was not too put out by his sentence. After all, he argued, he was a Yaduvanshi and inheritor to krishna's legacy!!
A case of selective reading of mythology, or perhaps, a reflection of how myths are misappropriated and misused in our country.

Alexander and Hercules

Myths have a strange way of uniting the most disparate forces, characters and events. Religion uses this quality of myth to unite the faithful and stir up a feeling of awe in doubt laden minds while others (a large group of unclassifiable, non labeled personalities like us…) are drawn to the marvelous stories that the quality invariably yields. Here is one such from a book that I am reading, On Alexander’s Track to the Indus by Aurel Stein.

Stein says that some of Alexander’s conquests in the Swat valley were inspired by the myth of Hercules. According to him, ancient accounts mention that after Alexander had captured several key points of the valley, the local people fled the towns to a 'rock fastness' in that country called Aornos. Alexander then made known to his troops that he wanted to conquer this rock by any means because it was believed that “this is a mighty piece of rock in that part of the country and a report is current concerning it that even Herakles, the son of Zeus had found it to be impregnable.”

Naturally, given Alexander's desire to be world conqueror, he was drawn to that place on earth where even Herakles or Hercules the great met his match. However Stein tells us, factual history can never corroborate the existence of Herakles let alone trace his journey across the world. Did Herakles come as far as India? We will never know. But, the story of Alexander’s obsession with the capture of the rock definitely makes the reading of history more wonderful.

Studying myth in India-2

My interest in myth led some of my teachers to suggest that I should enrol into a PhD programme. I hesitated at the thought of committing my time and energy into getting a degree or as many would say, a worthless piece of paper. But I saw this as the only avenue open for a regular and structured study of mythology and I found that I was more eager to work at a doctoral program than I was twenty years ago as a student.

In India, the only department that offers myth as a subject of study is the Sanskrit department at the University of Mumbai. However to enrol with them, I would need to know Sanskrit --- not learn it as I went along but be a master in it even before I could submit the first of the many forms that mark a PhD student’s journey. Alternatively, I needed to have an M A degree in a humanities subject with a minimum 55 per cent. I have neither and having worked as a writer and educationist, I am appalled that we still go by these ridiculous standards.

My graduation and post graduation studies were in economics. Today I want to study mythology – comparative mythology – an area that I had been studying informally for several years. In the interim, I have worked in various capacities in different organisations.

I tried telling the people concerned that work experience should make a difference and that I had co-authored two books. That should count?? I was also willing to sit for an entrance exam, if it were possible. However nothing has worked, nor is anyone willing to let me in through the door.

Mythology is not a subject that interests many (my class had five students) and the university admits that it may have to close it down for lack of students. And yet, when there is a student, there are no takers.

I am still trying and hoping for that crack in the door -- however thin it may be.

Studying myth in India-1

It is a year since i enrolled myself into a course in comparative mythology with the mumbai university. The course is conducted by the sanskrit department at the university of mumbai. I have had a great time reading and studying myth and having dithered over it for a long time, i am glad that i finally did the course and more importantly completed it and even sat for the exams!! Twenty years after my last exam which, by the way was disastrous, i never thought i would go through with it.

To spin back a bit in time, i have been a student of economics and never really thought that i would study further after the terrible time i had doing my masters. I cant seem to remember any other time in my life where a subject seemed so totally out of whack with my abilities!!

But then I fell in love with stories and writing and mythology careened into my existence. I was well into my adult life by then -- mother of two daughters and juggling furiously between managing home and part time jobs and reading up the various mythologies of the world. My first reaction which, i think is that of every person who is interested in myth, was that of joy, surprise and then amazement at the similarities in language and imagery used by disparate cultures from all over the world.

The more i read, the more i was drawn into the layers and layers of meaning held by a single myth. I wanted to know more, read more, discuss more. Thus began my hunt for a space that would allow me to do that. And that is when it hit me that in a country that is universally considered to be a grandmaster of the mythic dimension, there are no avenues open for a student of the subject. A one-year diploma conducted by Sanskrit department conducted over weekends is the only place where myths are studied. The course is great and is taught by people who are genuinely interested in the subject. Its content is varied and designed to provide an impetus for further research in the subject. However, if like me, you do want to research the subject further, then welcome to the abyss. You can study it as part of religious philosophy under a guru or a godman; you can study it as a byproduct of psychology or sociology but, there is no pure study of myth possible.

Strange, isn't it, for a country that prides itself on its mythological tradition!

Suns and Mothers

In ancient times, the sun, moon and the stars were prominent gods. They were honoured in sacrificial ceremonies and their power was feared as well as revered. The collective unconscious (to borrow from Jung) was rife with theories about the relationship that these celestial inhabitants had with the great gods of creation and between themselves.

In almost every culture the sun is a male god (except in Japan but, more about that later). The myths revolve around the sun’s life sustaining powers, its close links with life on earth and even its relationship with earth. Being male, the sun is shown to be a strong and everlasting source of life – however many cultures have struggled to depict another aspect of the sun which is its creative power. The sun sustains but, it also creates – as the early morning light that breaks darkness – and this creative power in all myths is feminine.

Different cultures have dealt with this in different ways. In India, for instance, we have separated the early morning aspect of the sun to create a goddess called Usas. She is dawn and in some stories, Surya, the sun’s great love. Surya spends an entire lifetime chasing her but is never able to catch up with her except in that brief interlude between dawn and morning.

The Chinese myths also deal with the feminine side of the sun in an interesting way. The story goes that the sky was home to ten suns and their parents. This led to chaos and commotion because every sun wanted its day in the sky. And thus the family squabbled until it became impossible for the world to go on with its task of creation.

Mother Xi He decided to take charge and as mothers are known to to do, she shouted her sons down. She said that there must be only one sun in the sky at a time. There was to be no argument about this -- she set aside a day for each of the ten brothers and in order to avoid any misappropriation of time spent in the sky, she announced that she would escort each sun across the sky.

Thus it came to be that the world was rid of the fighting suns and replaced by a family of ten obedient suns who are led by their mother in her chariot in a fair and orderly fashion, day after day. (World Mythology, Illustrated Guide: Sun, Moon and Stars, p94).

a hero's life

Joseph Campbell, the guru of all myth studies (at least in my book), says, “…(the) most critical function of mythology is to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity, in accord with himself (the microcosm), his culture (the mesocosm), the universe (the macrocosm) and the awesome ultimate mystery which is both beyond and within himself and all things…”

Could we then say that a hero is created by the circumstances that a society finds itself in time and time over? A hero is not born but made? And what is it that holds us back from becoming one?

what's the difference?

There are no two ways about this: heroes down the ages and across borders have an abundance of similarities. C G Jung who has contributed hugely to the understnding of hero myths has said that the collective unconscious drives mankind to create myths that are similar in outlook and content. This explains the similarities between the life cycles of heroes from Sumerian, Mayan, Chinese and Indian myths.

To explain the differences, we should perhaps look at the collective conscious which works in many ways. For instance, let us take the quest/adventure that takes a hero from his familiar environment into uncharted territory. Every hero has one and as Campbell has clarified in his book 'The hero with a thousand faces', every hero's journey is looped in this common cycle. But the quest itself varies from hero to hero and this is what is shaped by immediate and local concerns or waht we could call the collective conscious.

Consider the Sumerian myth -- Gilgamesh. After the death of Enkidu, his close friend and in some ways his alter ego, Gilgamesh the King of Uruk is devastated. he mourns the loss of his friend and fears the end of his own. This fear takes him on a journey into the unknown -- in search of the elixir of immortality.

Gilgamesh is told that there lives, in a land separated by cavernous gorges, shark infested oceans and uncrossable mountains, a grand old man called Ziusudra. This is the man who survived the great floods and upon whom the gods have bestowed immortality.

Gilgamesh decides to set out in search of this man and finds him after an arduous journey. But he is thwarted in his efforts by Ziusudra who tells him that “mankind is no more than a fragile reed and cannot expect permanence. Nothing is permanent on earth:

The dragon-fly emerges and flies.
But its face is in the sun for but a day.”

However not one to lose heart easily, Gilgamesh persists and finally wins the secret of the flower of immortality only to lose it to the snake who, ever since, has learnt to live on and on by simply shedding its skin! Gilgamesh loses the elixir because he is careless and in a brief moment of frailty, neglects to guard his gift as well as he should have. And thus as the clay tablets say, he fulfilled what the gods had in store for all men: ‘All men had returned to clay,’ said Ziusudra.

Take another hero: Hercules. He could have been an immortal hero but for the wrath of Hera, wife of Zeus. This is what made him human and ultimately even though he performed the 12 labours and fought hard, he could not overcome the obstacles placed in his path by Hera and her wily aides.

These stories reflect a concern over the end of human life. The characters carry the burdens placed by society in the form of social conduct, gender and duty and show the rest how to live their lives. However they also share what seems to have been a key concern of the times – immortality. Perhaps, we can say, that these societies were debating and theorising about death and what happens to us when we die.

Now let us move over to the heroes of Indian myth: Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Indra. Immortality is not an overriding concern in any of their lives. They fight rakhshasas, Asuras, evil relatives and cousins to emerge victorious and to always uphold the strength of good over evil.

One reason could be that the Vedic philosophy had grappled with death and life and created its own rationale that looked at life and death as the two milestones in a
recurring cyclical journey. Thsu there was already an acceptance of death as a temporary stop before the soul moved on and in most cases, lodged itself in another body. It was reborn and a hero's sould always went up and uniteds with god before it found the need to launch into an avatar. Mortality was not such a problem in a society that was dealing with assimilating different philosophies and cultures.

This is not to say that it never was a concern in Indian myth. It was and this is relfected in the battle for amrita and the samudra manthan. But the point is the cultural and social context that gave birth to the Indian heroes was at ease with the concept of mortality. And hence our heroes fought very different battles from their counterparts in the West

the hero is among us

C G Jung, whose work on archetypes has shaped much of modern day thinking on heroes believes that our myths conceal a valuable treasure in their structures and teachings. He believed that all human souls are tied together by an invisible thread which he calls the “collective unconscious”. This thread helps stitch a tapestry of images that reflect common desires, aspirations, fears and expectations.

Our hero myths draw on this collective unconscious to reveal a structure that is universal and laden with familiar motifs and symbols. We see the collective unconscious at work everywhere. This is also what draws our heroes into Campbell’s exhaustive list of stages that a hero must live his or her life through.

For instance every hero has a miraculous birth -- the birth of Ram and Krishna and Odysseus and Perseus are all miraculous conceptions.

All heroes are beckoned by the call of adventure -- whether it is Ram and his conquest of Lanka or Gilgamesh and his battle with Humbaba (the demon of the forests of Lebanon), or Perseus’ trials with Medusa – the stories demonstrate a common pattern.

Campbell tells us, in the context of the hero myth: “the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

There is no disputing this at all. What Campbell and Jung were doing in their own ways was creating a frame within which all of humanity could find its place. For Jung, who was a student of Freud, the objective was to study myths with the tools of psychology and for Campbell, it was to establish the purpose of myth which, he believed was to convey a simple and effective message that was global in reach, content and outlook.

For many today, the concerns are different. There is a growing feeling that there are no more heroes to be had – they just don’t make them any more.

Perhaps it would help our search if we looked at the mythical hero as more than a global symbol. His life is important not only because it holds up a model for all of mankind to follow but also because it is a repository of the literary and storytelling traditions, cultural concerns and social norms of the time.

For example even though Ram and Krishna answer the call to adventure, Ram’s guide is Viswamitra in the first phase of his journey while Krishna is his own guide. That is why even though Arjun and Perseus are out to slay the demons of injustice, the evils they fight are very different and so are their lives and loves.

Yet their lives would fit into the frame of both Campbell and Jung. And that is what makes myths so fascinating – they dip into the same universe of values and life stories but they create their own distinct worlds within that universe.

If, for a moment, we do focus on the differences in cultures and traditions that are reflected by our hero myths, we may find it easier to build our modern day hero. He may not be very far from the ancient ones but the narrative cloak and the moral codes that we create for him would be drawn from all that is around us.

Calling for heroes

In recent times, there have been several articles – scholarly and speculative – about the lack of heroes for the young today. There is no one to look up to and hence no model to follow is a commonly expressed lament – albeit in different forms and at different levels of erudition.

It is somewhat strange given the array of search engines and technologies at our disposal today that we are unable to locate one man or woman who would qualify for this post. Who is this elusive heroic being that the world seems to have produced in abundant quantities once upon a time?

There are many definitions of a hero but let us go by that given by Joseph Campbell. A hero, he said, “is the man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations”. A hero shows us hope where there is none, he builds bridges where no man has dared to go before and is as close to human as the gods can get.

In many myths, especially in India, the heroes are gods incarnate or gods in their own right. For instance, Krishna was a god incarnate and Indra, a major god who later lost his lustre as newer tribes and modern cultures established their supremacy over the old. Indra was the prime deity as is evident from the many verses in the Rigveda (World Mythology, Illustrated Guide which has been edited by Roy Willis)

The lives of Indra and Krishna may appear very different from that of the Greek heroes like Perseus and Odysseus or the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh. But they follow a pattern. They all fit the frame of heroic journey as described by Campbell in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Very briefly: Their birth is miraculous, their boyhood feats, magical and supernormal. They follow a calling that takes them through a series of adventures which in some way or the other, end in personal destruction (as in the end of hope, loss of love or death) but, their lives hold up a candle for the rest of humanity.

What Campbell and many others have done is helped us look at a hero beyond his immediate social context. The cyclical path of the hero establishes a pattern that ties heroic personalities from all over the globe, across time and age. It allows us to place seemingly disparate characters such as Krishna and Gilgamesh on a single white board and dissect their lives for the principles they stood for. And in most cases, we find the principles live in a common basket of values. Societal good over personal greed, the end of tyranny, hope among despair and so on…These are the values our heroes lived for and these are values that are eternal.

If we accept that, there should really be no doubt about the existence of a modern day hero. For these are values that live within us and we can build the priciples that help realise them and as we do that, we may find that we have not one, but many heroes to guide us through our lives. And they are all living within us.

guardian gods

the concept of gods and goddesses as protectors or guardians of a place is common to almost every myth, especially if it belongs to a multi pantheonic culture.
just as bonbibi protects our forests, we have mumbadevi protecting mumbai. And in greek myth, athene is the patroness of Athens.
Athene, interestingly is believed to have been borrowed from libyan lore by the pelasgians (pre Hellenic inhabitants of greece)where she was known as neth. (Greek myths: Robert Graves)

jungle lore

Its been a long time since i posted anything -- but the new year brings new resolve and many resolutions.

Was in kolkata and the sunderbans recently where the myth of the bonbibi or the forest goddess is very popular. The goddess is worshipped by muslims and hindus -- as a sari clad, bejewelled deity in some places and as a salwar kameez wearing young girl in others (though we did not come across this idol in any of the places we visited, i believe that the villages closer to Bangladesh worship her in this form). The bonbibi protects her followers against the wrath of dokkhin rai -- the tiger in human form.

Bonbibi was the child of a muslim trader who looked after the people of the forest. In a story that shows how she came to prevail over the region, we see how an orphan boy, dukhu is saved from the jaws of dokkhin rai. Bonbibi fights off dokkhin rai with help from her brother shah jongli and rescues the boy. (the myth is detailed in The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and several versions exist on the web too) In the end, dokkhin rai seeks forgiveness and bonbibi grants him his life. Even today when the locals go into the forest to collect honey or timber or fish in distant waters, they pray to bonbibi to protect them from dokkhin rai.

Good triumphs over evil.

Well, in this story it is not that simple because dokkhin rai is not really evil. He is the creator of the forest and all that resides in it. And bonbibi is the protector of the tribes that live off the forest. dokkhin rai has his reasons and bonbibi, hers and the two live in peace and harmony. Like man and nature -- they cant live without each other.

This myth also reflects the cultural and religious upheavals in the region and strongly establishes the secular credentials of the people of the region. It is still performed by local troupes on special occassions and for a week long festival in mid january during sankranti. And every performance is preceded by a brief reminder that bonbibi is worshipped by both hindus and muslims. Wish there were more such people sharing many more such stories all over the world.